Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 3 November 2023. Jaime Wyatt has released her new album Feel Good via New West. A genre-defying work of healing and self-love, the album was produced by Black Pumas’ Adrian Quesada, Hailed by Pitchfork as one of the “most…
Cameron Mackintosh’s spectacular new production of Miss Saigon has stormed onto the Her Majesty’s Theatre stage, captivating an enthusiastic audience anew. It last played at the same theatre 16 years ago. Miss Saigon is a deeply emotional work, featuring soaring vocals and exemplary production values – sound, lighting, choreography and visual effects. Based on Giacomo Puccini’s 1904…
The Gaslight Anthem, after a nearly decade-long hiatus, returns with their sixth full-length album, History Books. This New Jersey-born band continues to deliver their soulful, life-affirming rock sound, delving into topics ranging from mortality and mental health to the delicate aspects of human relationships. Since the release of the band’s fantastic sophomore album, The ’59…
Women treated shamefully by the Aussie Rules’ boys’ club. That is the theme of Patricia Cornelius’ gritty, feminist play In the Club. It concerns three young women who hook up with members of a football team and pay the price. Annie (Eva Seymour) transitions from a naïve, football-mad 15-year-old to an exploited 16-year-old, which sets the tone…
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 27 October 2023. Because Hold, Jack Tatum’s fifth album under the moniker Wild Nothing, was written in the aftermath of new parenthood during the pandemic, it was probably inevitable that it would be searching and existential music. But during…
Inspired by the 2009 Dutch horror film The Human Centipede, Synergy Production Co. has given us a musical parody featuring the same characters. Like the movie, it concerns a deranged German surgeon – Dr Heiter – who kidnaps three tourists and conjoins them surgically, mouth to anus … I kid you not. Dr Heiter is renowned for…
Rare is the artist who does their best work when they are on top of the world, when all is going well, and they are happy and fulfilled. Sufjan Stevens has explored a wide and disparate subject matter, from the folky Psalm-like spirituality of Seven Swans, the unique geographic and diverse cultural expressions of Illinois,…
Eighteen dynamos of dance and drums dazzle and delight at Arts Centre Melbourne. They are truly mesmerising in an energetic display of artistic brilliance. Let me set the scene. The curtain goes up to reveal two tiers. At ground level are nine dancers seated, ostensibly dressed in white with black highlights and taupe-coloured socks. Behind them, on a higher plane,…
The turbulent life of jazz singer Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan) is on show in an intimate club setting in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill. Holiday (7th April, 1915 – 17th July,1959) was nicknamed Lady Day by her friend, saxophonist Lester Young. Among her musical influences were Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith. Being an African…
Talk about playing mind games with words. Seventeen years after MTC staged this Tony Award winning musical comedy, Saltpillar Theatre has brought it back to tickle our funny bones again. It is, indeed, hilarious, more than a touch silly and really fun, but not without pathos. All the young contestants in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling…
